8. The Crisis of Priority
Alliance Witness, 1980.04.30, P. 24-25.

PRIORITY is an indispensable factor for success. Without priorities we fall on expediency and find ourselves in “much ado about nothing,” as Shakespeare has put it, with the most important things left undone.

Many Christian workers are victims of expediency they just do whatever comes their way and thereby waste their time and even their lives on trivialities. In the end they accomplish nothing really worthwhile. So it is of critical consequence whether or not a person or a group has well-chosen priorities.

The apostles had deep spiritual insight, which enabled them to have a true sense of values. Such a sense of values creates correct perspectives, which in turn produce correct priorities. They followed their priorities consistency.

Obedience before activity. The apostles were commanded by the Lord to stay in Jerusalem and wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit before beginning to evangelize. Realizing that their greatest wisdom was to obey the word of the Lord, they waited and prayed. Then the Lord’s promise was fulfilled and they received the reward of their obedience.

They learned a great lesson: obedience was work-greater work than all their activities. Our inactivity may give an opportunity to God’s activity. We too have to learn the secret of being inactive in order to be really active. Activity through inactivity is a paradox that is basic to spiritual success.

Quality before quantity. The 120 disciples who were filled with the Holy Spirit were of a high quality and each of them was spiritually dynamic.

They became leaders in the early church and drew people into the church every day. This resulted in rapid growth for the congregation.

The many new converts were im- mediately trained to “[continue] sted-fastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:42). And they in turn drew new people into their midst.

This process of continual training kept the believers spiritually productive. The failure of many movements lies in a lessening in the quality of followers due to a gradual slackening in their training.

Peter showed a strong sense of the importance of quality and purity when he took severe measures against the hypocrisy of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:l-11). His actions may seem extreme, but from a spiritual perspective they match the offense because the quality and purity of church members were the lifeline of the Christian movement.

Power before riches. When Peter and John were asked by a lame beggar for alms at the gate of the Temple, Peter said to him, “Silver and gold have I none; but such as 1 have give I thee” (3:6). Then he healed the beggar, and he walked. Peter had nothing in the way of mate- rial things, but he had something far better—power!

The whole course of church history would have been entirely different if the apostles had had riches but no power. It is a great tragedy when at times the church falls to such a low level of spirituality that she has riches and honor but no spiritual power.

Spiritual ministry before temporal service. When the Jerusalem church continued to grow and administration became more and more complicated, the apostles saw the impending danger of being pulled away from their main task of spiritual ministry. They said, “It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables” (6:2). They took a wise step in electing seven good, qualified brothers to be in charge of such administrative matters, including the caring for widows.

Service to those in physical or financial need is meaningful and important and constitutes a part of the total Christian ministry. But we must see our first priority and never allow temporal service to take first place or weaken our spiritual ministry. A real crisis arises when we take the second best as the best, or the less important as the most important.

Prayer before preaching. Peter said on behalf of all the apostles, “We will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word” (6:4). Notice the order of things here: prayer first and preaching second.

This is not incidental because the order expresses the apostles’ strong sense of utter dependence on divine power and wisdom for all their work. They clearly realized that all they had accomplished had been through supernatural resources, and that it would be foolish to carry on the work in their own strength.

Emphasis on prayer is always a true mark of a sense of dependence on God, and it is one of the prerequisites for spiritual success.

It is so easy for us to have our personal prayer time crowded out by busy schedules. But God loves to show His favor to those who are strongly determined to show their dependence on His mercy by prayer.

The historical above the theoretical. The apostles had their own system of apologetics. Their approach was totally historical. In Acts there are two long passages which recapitulate the history of Israel, the nation through which God revealed Himself. Stephen, Philip, Peter and Paul all took the historical approach in proving the truth of the Christian faith by referring to events in Israel’s past (7:1-53; 8:29-35; 10:34-43; 13:16-41).

Apostolic preaching laid the greatest emphasis on the historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus. Even the only piece of Paul’s preaching that is considered to be philosophical in approach climaxes and concludes with a ringing note on the resurrection of Jesus as divine proof of the Christian faith (17:22-31).

For over one hundred years liberal theology has followed prominent philosophical theories one after another. Thus the two have formed a close parallelism, which means two things: dependence of liberal theology on philosophy and a keen sense of the need of relevance.

In recent years more and more ac- credited theologians have espoused the importance and reasonableness of the historical approach in apologetics, thus liberating apologetics from the bondage and servitude of philosophy and the natural and social sciences.

It is interesting to notice that at the end of every period of major theological development there are always two different directions of reaction, one more liberal than its liberal fore- runner and the other more Biblical. The Biblical approach and emphasis keep surging up in different forms and ways. Liberal theological theories rise and fall and vanish-while historical Christianity stands strong and well.